Posted tagged ‘Argentina’

I awoke last night from a nightmare dream: I was in my ancestral country of Argentina and I was afraid once again of the dictator named Juan Domingo Peron and his wife Evita. That was scary indeed. The government was dominated by a party that made the laws as they pleased and no one had the power to check them, let alone prosecute their misdeeds. Even the press was muzzled or complicit. Here the wife of the president had a special foundation, Fundacion Eva Peron that accepted donations from wealthy donors and who received special treatment from the government. Anyone who dared to challenge this state of affairs was in trouble and the debate over the propriety of any act was thus ended.

But it was morning now and I relaxed knowing that I was now in a democratic country protected by a Constitution, honest organizations and lack of corruption, where no one is above the law, ordinary citizens are not threatened by any arm of the government and where no special favors are dispensed to high donors or foreign entities. Here the law is equal for all, and we can be sure that no one gets special treatment because they give money to a special foundation. My night was over and with it that awful dream.

Suddenly, though, I saw a high government official who was testifying that she never sent any classified material incorrectly, who lied about keeping a private email server. When the secret was out, she and her staff were busy destroying evidence. But wait, the government was investigating and we could breathe easily. After months of “investigation” by top enforcers of the law, the government forgave her trespassing. They criticized her for just being “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information but let her off the hook. The FBI did not pursue evidence of any statements that could be false, did not investigate any obstruction of justice and the destruction of evidence.

Even more, the agents gave immunity to people who could have provided evidence of crimes and these people went on to plead the Fifth Amendment refusing to testify before Congress. The entire investigation by the FBI and the Department of Justice reeked of willful negligence or favoritism – that is, until this week when the investigation was reopened because of a new set of emails.

Even more striking, I saw that the Clinton Foundation and the State Department headed by Hillary Clinton were one seamless entity, employing the same people and coordinating schedules. Emails discovered by people outside of government — who had forced their release against State Department wishes, showed that Clinton Foundation staff was questioning some State Department decisions by stating that President Clinton “will be very unhappy if that’s the case.”

Donors to the Foundation expected to receive special treatment such as being invited to State dinners or being given special business opportunities. The scandal of President Clinton in Haiti and his business partners, i.e., donors to the Foundation, and the confluence of extraordinarily high speaking fees at groups that later received profitable business deals and special access to the State Department headed by his wife—are these real or imagined?

Donors to the Foundation expected to receive special treatment such as being invited to State dinners or being given special business opportunities. The scandal of President Clinton in Haiti and his business partners, i.e., donors to the Foundation, and the confluence of extraordinarily high speaking fees at groups that later received profitable business deals and special access to the State Department headed by his wife—are these real or imagined?

Thirty-two sailors from a Chinese trawler were dramatically rescued off the coast of Argentina after the South American country’s coast guard pursued and sank ‘Lu Yan Yuan Yu 010’ for allegedly fishing illegally using banned fishing reel equipment.

Nationalist greed, as opposed to environmental protection, was the motivation of Argentina’s Naval Prefecture (PNA) when it chased and scuttled the ‘slow boat from China’ after observing it trawling inside the exclusive economic zone off Puerto Madryn, according to Argentinian officials.

“The vessel was hailed over radio and both visual and audio signals were sent to make contact. However, the vessel turned off its fishing lights and proceeded to flee towards international waters without responding to repeated calls over various frequencies,” the coastguard statement said. “The ship performed maneuvers designed to force a collision with the coastguard, putting at risk not only its own crew but coastguard personnel, who were then ordered to shoot parts of the vessel.”

The PNA is believed to have fired the first warning shots when the fishing vessel resisted attempts by the Argentines to board it.

China’s Foreign Ministry claimed the boat had been “chased for hours” before being sunk and says it has made “urgent representations” to Argentina in a bid to have an investigation launched.

This is not the first time Chinese trawlers have fallen foul of Argentina’s maritime patrols.

Back in 2012, two fishing vessels were detained for allegedly engaging in illegal squid fishing within the South American nation’s exclusion zone.

“Kirchner went on to say at the U.N. that when Samore was asked to provide the request in writing, all communications immediately ceased and Samore disappeared.” The Obama people knew that what they were doing was wrong, and would be hated by the American people.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner claimed Monday afternoon at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City that in 2010, the Obama administration tried to convince the Argentinians “to provide the Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear fuel,” reported Mediaite.

Kirchner said that two years into Obama’s first term, his administration sent Gary Samore, former White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Argentina to persuade the nation to provide Iran with nuclear fuel, which is a key component of nuclear weapons.

Kirchner’s full remarks are as follows, per the Argentine president’s official website:

“In 2010 we were visited in Argentina by Gary Samore, at that time the White House’s top advisor in nuclear issues. He came to see us in Argentina with a mission, with an objective: under the control of IAEA, the international organization in the field of weapons control and nuclear regulation, Argentina had supplied in the year 1987, during the first democratic government, the nuclear fuel for the reactor known as “Teheran”. Gary Samore had explained to our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Héctor Timerman, that negotiations were underway for the Islamic Republic of Iran to cease with its uranium enrichment activities or to do it to a lesser extent but Iran claimed that it needed to enrich this Teheran nuclear reactor and this was hindering negotiations. They came to ask us, Argentines, to provide the Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear fuel. Rohani was not in office yet. It was Ahmadinejad’s administration and negotiations had already started.”…

Kirchner went on to say at the U.N. that when Samore was asked to provide the request in writing, all communications immediately ceased and Samore disappeared….

LONDON — The United States pressed Argentina to end its investigation of Iranian complicity in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in which nearly 100 people were killed.

Western diplomatic sources said the administration of President Barack Obama urged Argentina on several occasions to either stop or limit the investigation into the bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association in Buenos Aires. The sources said the U.S. appeals marked one of the demands by Iran for a reconciliation with Washington.

“Argentina had hard evidence against at least one Iranian leader, which prevented him from traveling abroad,” a source said.

A key Iranian suspect was identified as Ali Akhbar Velayati, foreign minister from 1981 until 1987, and deemed close to supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Velayati has been on the official wanted list of Interpol since 2007 and a subject of an international arrest warrant by Argentina.

“One of the first demands by Iran to the administration was that Argentina be pressed to drop the warrant,” the source, close to the Argentine leadership, said. “Within months, the U.S. followed up with a high-level meeting in which Argentina was asked to lay off.”

The sources said Buenos Aires eventually complied. In 2013, Argentina and Iran signed an agreement for a joint investigation of the AMIA bombing, deemed a cover-up by Buenos Aires.

On Jan. 18, a leading Argentinian prosecutor assigned to investigate an alleged government cover-up on AMIA was found shot to death in his home. The prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, had been scheduled to appear in front of Congress and present evidence that President Cristina Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman shielded Teheran in connection with the bombing.

“[They] took the criminal decision of inventing Iran’s innocence to satisfy commercial, political and geopolitical interests of the Argentine republic,” a 289-page report by Nisman said.

It was not clear whether the report contained evidence of U.S. intervention in the alleged plot to clear the Iranians. The 51-year-old Nisman, appointed in 2005, had presented evidence that Iran sponsored the bombing, conducted by its main proxy, Hizbullah.

On Jan. 21, the ranking Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Obama has become the leading defender of Iran. Sen. Robert Menendez suggested that the administration was coordinating with Teheran in efforts to block U.S. sanctions on Iran.

“The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Iran,” Menendez said. “And it feeds to the Iranian narrative of victimization, when they’re the ones with original sin.”

For her part, Ms. Kirchner said Nisman was killed by opponents of the president. Earlier, officials asserted that Nisman committed suicide.

“I’m convinced that it was not suicide,” Ms. Kirchner said. “They used him when he was alive but then they needed him dead.”

He documented enough of his charges that Interpol issued “red notices” for seven high-ranking Iranian officials, including Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Ali Velayati, who were Iran’s president and foreign minister respectively at the time of the AMIA bombing. (Interpol does not have the power to arrest, so a “red notice” is as close as it comes to issuing an arrest warrant) Rafsanjani, despite being implicated in an act of terrorism in another nation is often referred to as a “moderate” nowadays. He is also considered to be a mentor to Iran’s current president, also often referred to as a “moderate,” Hassan Rouhani.

Alberto Nisman’s work exposed the danger that Iran poses to world security. Iran continues to violate international law with impunity and unfortunately there are too few Nisman’s daring to challenge Iran’s brazen misbehavior. His death will make the task of reining in Iran’s ambitions that much more difficult.

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Sunday night Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found shot to death in his apartment. Nisman had been scheduled the following day to present his criminal complaint against Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner before a closed session of Argentina’s congress.

The initial claim (one made by Kirchner herself on her Facebook page) that Nisman committed suicide hardly seemed credible at the time. How many people would kill themselves before the high point of their careers? Nisman had spent ten years investigating the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing in Buenos Aires and now he was about to charge the president and other officials of his country with conspiring to cover up the Iranian involvement in that attack. (Now Kirchner says he was killed but “suggests that Nisman was murdered on the instructions of his foreign masters in order to create a scandal damaging to her and to her government.”)

Subsequent revelations during the week have made the claim of suicide even less credible now. At Business Insider, Armin Rosen recounted some of those revelations.

The lack of an exit wound suggested the fatal shot was fired at a further distance than Nisman could have managed had the wound been self-inflicted. His last WhatsApp was a photo of stacks of documentation related to the next day’s testimony and Nisman had apparently given his maid a grocery list for the following week. A 10-person government security detail was reportedly pulled off of his apartment the night of his assassination. Most damningly, there was no gunpowder residue found on Nisman’s hands, physical evidence that he didn’t discharge a firearm prior to his death.

Fausta has more, including some gleaned from the Spanish press. Notably despite earlier claims that Nisman’s apartment was locked from the inside, there are reports that there were two other ways into his apartment that were not locked. Fausta is also right that Nisman’s murder is all about Iran. (Rosen also wrote, “no matter who’s responsible for Nisman’s death, the Iranian regime benefits.”)

Nisman’s work on the AMIA case was invaluable in documenting Iran’s efforts to build a terror infrastructure in South America. Matt Levitt, an expert on Hezbollah, who recently published a book about the Iran-backed terror organization, wrote this week, “As I was writing my book, trying to navigate the convoluted details of the AMIA bombing and other Hezbollah plots, Nisman was an invaluable resource.”

Nisman’s work wasn’t just academic though. He documented enough of his charges that Interpol issued “red notices” for seven high-ranking Iranian officials, including Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Ali Velayati, who were Iran’s president and foreign minister respectively at the time of the AMIA bombing. (Interpol does not have the power to arrest, so a “red notice” is as close as it comes to issuing an arrest warrant) Rafsanjani, despite being implicated in an act of terrorism in another nation is often referred to as a “moderate” nowadays. He is also considered to be a mentor to Iran’s current president, also often referred to as a “moderate,” Hassan Rouhani.

The AMIA bombing was not the only time Iran’s leadership was implicated in an attack on foreign soil. In addition to Rafsanjani and Velayati, a red notice was issued for Ali Fallahian for the AMIA bombing. Rafsanjani, Velayati and Fallahian were all implicated in another terror attack on foreign soil.

Iran’s revolutionary government is lawless. The Iranian actors in these foreign terror attackes weren’t rogue operators but members of the country’s political elite. It’s something to keep in mind when the Obama administration insists that it will make a nuclear agreement with Iran that will make everyone safer and more secure.

Even assuming the P5+1 nations can come to an agreement with Iran (an agreement is hardly a foregone conclusion, Iran would probably be very happy with a series of temporary agreements that free up billions and don’t force it to dismantle any element of their nuclear program), what grounds are there to trust Iran to keep its commitments?

Remember that the crisis with Iran over its nuclear program stems from Iran’s violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that it signed. Six UN Security Council resolutions – three of them unanimous – were passed imposing sanctions on Iran for its violations. Iran isn’t looking to come into compliance but to be granted absolution for its violations.

Alberto Nisman’s work exposed the danger that Iran poses to world security. Iran continues to violate international law with impunity and unfortunately there are too few Nisman’s daring to challenge Iran’s brazen misbehavior. His death will make the task of reining in Iran’s ambitions that much more difficult.